Turnstile summer is about to pop off in overdrive in just a matter of days, and the other half of hardcore has been getting extra aggro lately — not just likely as a reaction to the former, but also because of the current state of everything burning this world down which has the scene feeling the need to deliver a certain level of intensity to meet its own. You’d hate to see a band like Speedway getting lost in the noise of it all, because we need artists like them who carrying on in anthem with big, heavy melodic chops built around buzzsaw riffs, a crucially fast rhythm section, and the occasional electrifying solo to keep the pit’s people particles bouncing off one another rather than crashing out hard before we can figure out a way from this mess.

Speedway are an interesting case at that on A Life’s Refrain. Hailing from Stockholm, the five-piece handle combustible elements from American youth crew, the Revolution Summer, and the natural lineage of Refused’s metal-injected post-hardcore socio-political fire with ease when fueling up their tank. Throw in production from Title Fight’s Ben and Ned Russin (the latter whom guests on “Day By Day”) as well as pristine heavy mastering artillery from Arthur Rizk, and you’ve got a dream team behind your debut full-length that gets every move right, living up to their name by racing through a dozen shouting anthems with deeply emotive passion yet a hyper-focused state of mind, all cylinders firing hard behind them.

Where are they headed? Their momentum only knows one direction and it’s going forward from the moment “Thin Air” is pursuant of a greater destiny. Though they may encounter walls of motif — a future impassed on “Permission to Dream” featuring Ekulu’s Chris Wilson, smoldering sacred ground on “Walls of Ire”, and an ascendent hairpin turn inside-out on “Solitaire” — every one of them is smashed through until they see visions of dreams only imagined on “Another Life”. “How do I grasp / What’s so far from my reach? / As the echoes of my choices forever follow me?,” vocalist Anton screams on its final burner , “Tomorrow Once More”. We may still be a distance away from getting there, but there’s more than enough left in Speedway’s tank to hold us over in the meantime…

Highlights: “Thin Air”, “Passion Play”, “Tomorrow Once More”

Speedway’s A Life’s Refrain is available now on Revelation Records.

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